


What's in a Name; What is a Playwright?

by ergo_existence



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, do androids dream of electric sheep?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:04:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2349383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ergo_existence/pseuds/ergo_existence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Existence.</p><p>What a funny thing.</p><p>>>funny</p><p>2 definitions acquired</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's in a Name; What is a Playwright?

**Author's Note:**

> This occurred to me. Must be extracted.

Titanium and steel and a plethora of other metals you can name is all you are. You are an artificially created intelligence.

You follow orders. You are a Mantis-class military assault droid. Your voice is a sing-song of electric rhythms, you are a monument to human capacity to imagine, to create, to conceptualise to birth, to your blueprints, to your limbs. Your veins do not run with blood. You do not have a heart. You do not sleep; you are powered by the energy that is threaded into your ports and your body and your being. You do not have existence; you have a date you are completed, and you have a date you are terminated.

And you know very well the concept of termination.

\--

You sit silent on the ship.

You do not feel the crash, but you do feel the thump, the final stop. Perhaps it is not feeling.

But that is how you convert it to tangible thought. If you had thought, that is.

You power down.

\--

His name is Caboose. He has a soft voice, to your ears— _ears_. He is gentle with his words. He does not hide behind metaphor or simile or any other human way of expressing emotion or meaning that requires a cultural understanding; an understanding you do not have,

 _Freckles_.

He gives you a name. Bestows it upon you as a gift. You are not, always, a droid. You are, here, Freckles.

Caboose says, _Names are important Freckles! So you never get lost. Somebody can call your name and then you can know to come. Church told me that. When he yelled at me._

You learn about Church.

 _He is my best friend,_ Caboose begins one day. _But you are my bestest._

He isn’t always tight with his form.

But he is Caboose, to you, Freckles.

What better a leader than he.

You are never happier— _happier_ —to follow protocol. He brought you back, didn’t he?

\--

 _Freckles_ _do you ever feel things? Like you wake up and I’m here are you happy to see me_?

Happy is a concept you understand. You are programmed to but you often disregard it, even so.

Happy is a human way of expressing delight at something; happy is the pursuit of humanity.

You say, **Yes, Caboose.**

He says, _let’s play fetch Freckles!_

Of course you play. And you do not tire, Mantis-class military assault droid. You are a machine.

But you are also Freckles and you are also Caboose’s best friend.

There is definition of existence for you, and you come to wonder what existence is for a droid. An intelligence not up to that of a human’s.

And there Caboose is. And you are, coincidentally, beside him.

**> >Humans are...**

**> >what is the word**

**> >odd.**

**> >An emotional word; an understanding of norm; taking this understanding and reviewing those that do not conform.**

**> >Machine,**

**> >learn your place.**

\--

Here you are. At arms.

Call to arms.

Watch them fall around you. Flesh and meat and guts—cyborg, you hear, **does he know what it is to be machine—** pure robot **what is he who is Lopez—** other Mantis— **does this Mantis know of thought _—_** and bullets piercing through armour, through helmet, from guns to skulls **acquiring target** from your arms to their death—and you watch, you fall—you hear:

_Freckles shake!_

You take your limb and hit it upon the ground. You know there is Private First Class Tucker situated at the tunnel and you understand the nature of Agent Washington’s decision.

You are machine but sometimes humans follow processes that are similar to yours. Knowledge thought action. Though for you there is no thought, but nonetheless—if a machine could empathise, you are empathising with Agent Washington.

You are unsure as to when your existence became as such.

What a concept.

\--

Maybe it is a shame you power down, for a second time. That you feel life absolve beneath your feet—that you recognise life—that you _think_ there is life—that there is action to your death, that the precipice you jump off is not wholly because of order to action but also, also because you think, think, think, protecting them is perhaps on your programmed _List of Things You Want to Do_ ; you have a list of _Things You Want to Do_ ; your parameters dictate such is never to happen, you are never to do this.

What you have done should have occurred out of simple direction.

You, instead, chose to do so out of will.

>>Do not forget your place.

As you feel your body crumble,

**perhaps**

**humans**

**are not so**

**odd**

**> >perhaps**

**> >the norm**

**> >is changing.**

\--

You are quiet; thrumming; asleep. A glowing place of terminology; of numerals, and logic. Words cannot create tangibility; words cannot convey where you are.

Is this what they call sleep. Is this what Caboose talked about?

 _I had a bad dream last night_.

You **do not dream.**

 _So I counted sheep_.

\--

There is no hardware here for you to process your surroundings, no software for you to hear what is calling out; to hear; to see; to be an echo of what humans can be.

but sometimes

sometimes you may even dare

dare

to think?

You cannot think here.

(You might hear them, maybe

or perhaps that is a stimuli of numbers

or perhaps

**it is all a concept of numbers).**

**\--**

Awake and bright and blooming; returned to feeling the process beneath the tips of your teeth on the chip—this is a simple gun, a brutish kind to run off your mind and body but here you can utilise some of your abilities, here you can be proud.

_Freckles oh my god you’ve grown up from the baby you were but before that you were bigger Tucker what do you call it when you go from bigger to smaller to little bit bigger in age I mean like an adult to a baby to maybe a child oh okay I will ask Wash Wash what do you call it—_

_Caboose just a moment we need to be ready okay I can’t leave you and Tucker behind here without you knowing the plan_

You already know the plan because you listen, Freckles.

Your name:

_Because you have little spots on your nose Freckles you’re Freckles!_

You do not have any now as you are a gun but the name remains.

 _Freckles_.

And when the bell rings, when you know what to do, when you have the seconds down to the milliseconds, you shoot—

And there you go.

_You are not human._

_But, a name_

_is important._

_and_

_you are Caboose’s best friend_

_and_

_you are on Blue Team._

_There is no I in Team_

_and you, Freckles—_

Are no longer of a singular unit; a team is a set, defined thing in English; Caboose talks about team. Tucker talks about team. Wash talks about team. You learn about nicknames. You learn a lot of things, for a Mantis. For a **droid.**

Existence isn’t a tight thing, a tight rope that you, Freckles, and your processing takes to set down hard define square box—no, no Freckles.

Existence is important.

Humans don’t even know what they’re doing.

>>and that is okay

>>it is called human error

>>for a reason

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.


End file.
